Speaker 1 00:03
Absolutely yes, thank you, Steve, for being here. So we have Steve Snyder here with us today. Steve is a graduate of UCLA. He lives in Seal Beach, California, and in 2009 he retired from Vision Service plan. After a 36-year career working in sales and sales management, he then began his quest to learn more about the World War II experiences of his father, pilot Howard Snyder, and the crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth. It became his passion, and after four and a half years of dedicated research, he it resulted in his book Shot Down, which has received 25 book awards. Steve is the president of the 306 Bomb Group Historical Association and on the board of directors for the Eighth Air Force Historical Society, and he keeps a very busy by making PowerPoint presentations to all types of organizations and attending air shows around the country, signing copies of his book. So I am going to give it up to Steve. I believe he has a PowerPoint. He is going to share with you all and go over his story and some things there. So Steve, thank

Steve Snyder 01:20
you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. It's always an honor to present to a group of veterans. Thank you for your service to our country. God bless you. I was asked to give a little background about me before I started with the presentation, so I'll try to do that real quick. I was born in Pasadena, California, and I've lived in Southern California all my life. When I'm as a youth, I was a surfer, and but I've traveled all around the United States on the jobs that I've I've had. I went to UCLA, like Tori mentioned, and I served in the California Army National Guard for six years during the Vietnam era. My unit was not called up to to go to Nam. I moved to Seal Beach shortly after graduating. I'm still here today. My wife Clint and I live here. We have three sons and three grandsons. The youngest of which is named after my dad, Howard Schneider. After college, I had a few odd jobs, and then went to work for Vision Service Plan VSP, which provides vision care as an employee benefit that corporations offer their employees to cover eye exams, glasses, and contact lenses. The first 11 years, I was a regional manager in Southern California and Southern Nevada, and the next 10 years, when the company went national, I was vice president of national accounts. I started traveling all around the United States, calling on Fortune 500 companies, and then even though I lived in Southern California the last 15 years, I was vice president of our Eastern sales division, which is everything east of the Mississippi. So I was traveling quite a bit. Growing up, I knew the basics of my dad's World War II history. I knew was a B 17 pilot. He was stationed with the Eighth Air Force in England. His plane was named the Susan Ruth after my oldest sister, who was one year old at the time that he went overseas. He flew bombing missions over occupied Europe and Germany. On February 8 of 1944, his plane was shot down, and he was missing in action for seven months. But he evaded capture, and eventually made it back to England. But it wasn't until I retired from VSP that I had the time to really delve into my dad's war history in more detail. And my parents had kept a lot of material from the war years, and I just wanted to go through that and organize it and learn a few more details. And there were two items that were really significant. One was a diary that my dad wrote while he was missing in action about his plane being shot down, which is absolutely riveting. That's in the book, and the other item were all the letters that my dad had written to my mother while he was stationed in England before being shot down, and he was really candid in these letters. He talked about what bombing missions were like. He talked about what life was like on the airbase, what life was like in London and England at the time, escapades of him and his crew, and I just became fascinated with the story. And as Troy mentioned, it became my passion. Started reading book after book about the air war over Europe. Did countless research hours of research on the internet, downloading declassified military documents. I found members or relatives, I should say, members of his crew, and ask them whatever information they could give to me. Start going to World War II reunions, listening to veterans tell their stories. And finally, three years into my research, I just came to the conclusion that the story was so unique and so compelled. So I started to write a book. So now. Let me start. Let me share my PowerPoint presentation with you here. Here we go. Bear with me for a minute. There we go.

Steve Snyder 05:21
So the from the time I started my research at the time the book was published was four and a half years, and the first half of the book builds up to the day that the claim was shot down, and then the second half of the book is all about what happens afterwards, and it's just not about my dad, but it goes into detail about what happened to each member of the crew and all the Belgian people that risked their lives trying to help them. But I could not have written the book if it wasn't for two Belgian gentlemen. On the right, you see my dad with his bomber jacket on with Dr. Paul Delahay. That picture was taken in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Belgium, and my dad's plane being shot down. And then on the right-hand side, you see me with Jacques Hello. And these men were young boys during the war, and they were greatly affected by it. They saw firsthand atrocities committed against their family and friends by the Nazis, and later in life they became local became local historians, and they interviewed all these Belgian people and members of the Belgium underground about events that took place involving my dad and his crew, and they documented their testimony, and they gave me unbelievably detailed information about events that would have been lost forever. So I owe them a huge debt. Initially, my dad didn't go into the Air Force as a result of the first peacetime draft in history implemented in September of 1940. My dad went into the army, and at the time, the U.S. military was woefully weak. They ranked 18th in military strength in the in the world behind Romania, and they were also very ill-equipped too. By you can tell by the World War One uniform that my dad has on here. Three months later, he married Ruth Hempel at First Lutheran Church in Pasadena, California. My mother was born and raised in California, like myself. My dad was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, and moved to California before starting high school. And then a few months later, on December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States with a war. My mother was very fearful. The future was very uncertain, so that Christmas she went up to Washington, Fort Lewis, Washington, where my dad was stationed, to see my dad over Christmas. And nine months later, Susan Ruth was born, with a new bride and a baby on the way. My dad didn't think he could support him very well in the privates pay in the army, so he decided to join the air force. Or if he could make it through pilot training, he could become an officer and make more money. So in June of '41, he went through pre pre flight training, Santa Ana Army Army Air Base in California, and then went through the three phases pilot training. These are the three planes he flew in pilot training. In primary, up top, he flew an old Stearman biplane, and then in basic pilot training, in the middle picture there, flew a multi-valent single-wing plane, and then down below in advanced pilot training, he flew a Curtis Wright 189 twin-engine plane. He graduated from advanced pilot training in April of 1943. Then he went to transitional training to learn how to fly a B-17 four-engine bomber. Then to operational crew training, where the various members of the of the crew came together and they learned to operate as a team. And then once deemed ready, they were assigned overseas to the European Theater of Operations, and my dad and his crew reported to the 306 Bomb Group at Thurlei, England, on October 21st of 1943. This is what the base looked like back then. It's not there any there, there anymore. But the countryside looks exactly the same. It's all rural farmland. There is a nice little museum there now. However, the 306 bomb group's nickname was first over Germany because they were the first bomb group in the Eighth Air Force to hit a target in Germany, Wilhelmshaven, on January 27th of 1943. They were also the longest-serving bomb group in the Eighth Air Force. Probably some of you have watched the 1949 movie *12 O'Clock High* starring Gregory Peck.

Steve Snyder 09:48
Well, that was based on a true story about the 306th bomb group, the fictitious bomb group in the movie *The 9/18* was derived by multiplying the 306th by. Here you see my dad's crew would be 17 had a 10 man crew. There were four officers kneeling in front. On the lower left is my dad. He was the first pilot, and as such, the commander of the crew and the plane. And then going across, you have the co-pilot, the navigator, and the bombardier, and then six enlisted men behind them who were mainly gunners. That's not the Susan Rooth. That's just a picture of a B-17. They took their crew picture in front of them. I always like to point out the nose art in the upper left-hand corner. I love the nose art. It's interesting that the Air Force was the only entity that allowed their planes to be painted. The Marines didn't. The Navy didn't. Nor did other countries, but the Air Force thought it would help the morale of these young guys if they could personalize their planes, and they were very creative in what they named and painted on their planes. Many times it was a cartoon character, but more often than not, it was a scatterly clad or renewed woman. The 306 bomb group flew B-17 bombers. It was nicknamed a flying fortress because of the armament on the plane. It had 1350 caliber machine guns, so it could put out a tremendous amount of firepower, and also it could take a tremendous amount of battle damage and continue flying. Here you see the crew positions on the plane in the front, you have the bombardier. His main job was to draw the bombs accurately. But in the the later model, the G model, it had a chin turret underneath the nose of the plane. So if they were under attack by enemy fighters, he manned the the chin gun. I mean the cheek gun. And then behind him, you have the navigator. He needed to know where they were and where they were going and went under attack. He manned cheap guns that were on each side of the plane, and above them you have the two pilots: first pilot in the left seat, co-pilot in the right seat, and you needed two pilots to fly these planes back then. It took a lot of muscle to fly these planes, and also was very tiring both mentally and physically because their missions lasted six to 10 hours in length, and they flew in tight formations. So you had to stay alert at all times, or else you could clip a wing in the plane and next to you, run in the plane in front of you and go down. Also, they had to continually fight air turbulence and not just the turbulence from the weather, which were typically pretty bad over northern Europe, but with all those bombers being in such close proximity to one another, the wake turbulence and the prop wash would just churn the air up like a washing machine. And behind the pilots, you had the flight engineer. He manned the top turret when they were under attack. He was also called the crew chief. Crew chief. He was kind of the onboard on board mechanic and knew how everything worked. And then behind the Bombay, you had the radio operator. That was the most comfortable position on the plane. He had a relatively roomy compartment and a chair to sit at. And then down below him, the most cramped position on the plane, the ball turret gunner. Again, these missions were six to 10 hours in length, and he was crammed in his fetal position for hours on end. So that was kind of pretty uncomfortable. Then above the ball, you had the two waist gunners, which were the most exposed position on the plane, and then another cramped position in the tail, the tail gunner. My dad flew his first mission on november 3 of 1943 to Wilhelmshaven. It was the first time that the Eighth Air Force put up over 500 bombers on a mission, and flying to combat was brutal. There were 26,000 men died in the Eighth Air Force, which was more than the entire Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific.

Steve Snyder 13:46
Another 28,000 men became prisoners for war after their planes were knocked out of the sky, either by German fighters or anti-aircraft fire. Either combat crewmen in the Eighth Air Force during World War II was the most dangerous assignment in the United States military, and it was dangerous from the time they took off to the time they landed. There were about 40 bomb groups in the Eighth Air Force located in an area called East Anglia, which is about the size of Vermont, and these bases were located only about five to 10 miles apart, so on the day of a mission, you could have hundreds of bombers taking off all at the same time. And back there, there was no radar, radar, no air traffic control, and usually the weather was socked in, and they couldn't see anything until they got above the cloud layer. So mid-air collisions were not uncommon, and airmen lost their lives. The next thing they had to deal with was the elements. These planes weren't pressurized back then, so above 10,000 feet, they had to go on oxygen, or else they'd pass out in a couple of minutes and could die. And also, it was extremely cold. It was minus 40 to 60 degrees below zero. Those planes, so frostbite was a big problem. One of my dad's waist gunners was in the hospital for two and a half months from the seriousness seriousness of his of his frostbite injuries. Here you see a waist gunner in the combat uniform that they wore: steel helmet, tinted goggles, oxygen mask. He's wearing a flak jacket that was an apron that had metal plates in the front and back to try to protect him, and then his fleece-lined jacket and pants, thermal gloves, boots, and then you see the the white harness there around his his waist. That was a parachute harness. It didn't actually wear their parachutes in the plane because it was too cramped is more crowded in a B-17 than a submarine, so if they needed to bail out, they had to have their what's about them to find their parachute and then hook it on clips to the back of the harness and then bail out. The next thing they had to deal with was enemy fighters. Germany had radar stations set up along the continental coast of Europe, so they knew when these bomber formations were coming, they'd send up their Air Force Luftwaffe to intercept him. Here you see a waist gunner again firing his 50-caliber machine gun with all those empty cartridges on the ground, wearing his flak jackets, and then ammunition for the machine guns came in belts that were 27 feet in length. So if he fired the whole belt, they said he fired the whole nine yards. At the beginning of the air war, was Eighth Bomber Command's belief that these heavily armed bombers flying in tight formations of hundreds of bombers could defend themselves from the Luftwaffe, and they flew in what was called a combat box formation, and here you see the box of a combat wing, and then inside the box of the wing, you have three boxes representing bomb groups, and then within the boxes of the bomb groups, you had three another three boxes representing bomb squadrons. So the theory was that all this interfacing firepower could ward off the Luftwaffe, but sadly that was not the case during the early years of the war, especially in 1943. The Eighth Air Force took devastating losses. The average number of missions flown in 1943 before being shot down was only six, and the losses culminated in October of that year, which was referred to as Black Week, when over four missions they lost 14 148 bombers. It's almost 1,500 men. The most, the worst one was on October 14th, Black Thursday, when they sent up 291 B-17s, and 60 of them were shot down, 600 men on one mission, and the 306 bomb group lost 10 out of the 15 P 17 s that they sent up. Well, after that, the eight air forces in shock.

Steve Snyder 17:54
There was no way that they could continue taking these devastating losses, and they stopped flying into Germany for the remainder of the war, it wasn't until the introduction of the P 51 Mustang at the beginning of 1944, that they finally had fighter escorts that could take these bombers all the way into Germany and escort them all the way back. The P 51 Mustangs were unbelievably successful by the time D-Day rolled around on June 6, 44, they had basically wiped out the Luftwaffe. The next thing these bomber formations had to deal with was anti-aircraft fire. This is a flak gun. Flak was the abbreviation for the German word for air fret air force defense cannons, and they were deadly weapons. They fired 20 shells a minute, and they were calibrated to explode at the same altitude that these bombers were flying. And when these shells exploded, they bursted out hundreds of feet and could easily penetrate the thin aluminum skin of those bombers. From a distance, they looked like innocent black puffs, but when these bombers got into that killing field; those explosions got deafening. And if one went off near the bomber or just violently rocked the ship, if a bomber was hit directly, it would just basically explode and disintegrate and disappear. Or if it hit a wing, they would just plummet to the ground like a stone. And then, after they finished their bomb run, headed back to their bases in England, they again faced enemy fighters. And even when they reached England, they had a number of dangers to deal with. These bombers could be running out of gas. The weather could be socked in in England. They couldn't even find their air bases. They could have injured or dead pilots on board. They had could have sustained a tremendous amount of battle damage, engines being out, flight controls being out, and crash landings were a commonplace. And once again. Airmen would lose their lives. It was on a bombing mission to Frankfurt, Germany, on february 8 of 1944. My dad's plane dropped its bomb successfully, but the bomb bay doors got hit by flak, and they couldn't get them back up. And as a result, that caused a drag on the spay on the on the plane. They lost airspeed and they fell behind the bomber formation, heading back to England, and they were singled out by two German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters, who came in for the kill in the ensuing air battle. Susan Ruth was shot down, but both those German fighters were shot down as well. One was piloted by Siegfried Merrick; his plane crashed, and he died in the plane, and the other one was piloted by Hans Berger, who was able to bail out. One day when I was during my doing my research, my wife Glenda said, "Why don't you try to find the Druid pilot that shot your dad down? Which I thought was impossible, and I thought, you know, she's naive; she doesn't know what she's talking about, but like a good husband, I did what she told me to do, and lo and behold, I found Hans Berger. And fortunately for me, he became a translator after the war and spoke perfect English, and we became friends. And he gave me some wonderful insight of what it would like to go up against the Eighth Air Force. I mentioned the book goes into detail about what happened to each member of the crew, but I don't have time to do that today. But after my dad bailed out, he came down in these trees just right at the French-Belgian border, and his parish she got hung up in the branches, and he couldn't get down. He was dangling 20 feet off the ground. But fortunately for him, a couple young Belgian men, Henri Franken and Ramon Dervan, came to his rescue before the Germans got to him. They helped him down this street. That's Henri Franken there. These pictures were sent to my dad after the war. There's over 200 time periods in the book, so you can visualize everything you're reading about. Many taken by Belgian people during the war. It happened in daylight, early afternoon, and they thought it was too dangerous to move my dad during daylight because there were German patrols combing the area.

Steve Snyder 22:14
They told him to stay put, and they'd come back that night to get him, which they did, and they took him to the Draven farmhouse. That farmhouse is in Belgium, but those trees are in France, so it's right at the border. He only stayed there one night. Again, there were German patrols in the area, and they thought it was too dangerous for him to stay there any longer. So the next night, a Belgian customs officer, Paul Tilcan, came and attended by take to take him to a safer location, and after that, he was moved from place to place to place. How long he stayed in any given location depended on how brave the people were who stayed there and how dangerous the Belgian underground thought it was for him to stay there. Here you see my dad was a few of his helpers. He had many more helpers than this. He's on the right. I had stuck a beret on him to try to help him blend in with the locals, but he was six foot three, so he was quite a bit taller than the locals. And the people who hid my dad or any down airmen, for that matter, were unbelievably brave people. They risked not only their lives, but their lives of family and friends, because if the German secret police found out about it, they'd be arrested, tortured, either shot or sent to a concentration camp. And some of the people who helped my dad and other members of his crew did meet that fate. Normally, when they came across under shot down airmen, they tried to get them back through England through various escape routes. They would down from Belgium into France and over the Pyrenees into neutral Spain, and then out through British control of Gibraltar. But something always went wrong trying to get my dad in these escape networks, and plus he was almost discovered several times, which were described in the book. So he became quite frustrated with this, and it was very stressful. As any time there could be a Belgian collaborator that turned him over to the Germans, word came that the Allies landed at Normandy on D-Day, so he decided to get back in the fight. Under like unlike most airmen, he had that year's experience in the infantry, so he knew how to fight on the ground. So he decided to join the French resistance. He felt that there were U.S. military men fighting and risking their lives, trying to preserve freedom, and so he thought it was his duty to do likewise. His helpers tried to talk him out of it because it was it was really dangerous. He could have been killed fighting against the Germans, or if the Germans captured him, he would have been shot on the spot as a spy. The logical or safest thing to do was just for him to stay put and wait for the U.S. armies to come up through France after D-Day, and the area be liberated. But he talked to one of his helpers, Annie K. Kools, accompanied him on bicycles over the border into France, and he hooked up with a unit of the French Resistance called the Maquis. This isn't the group he hooked up with, but give you an example of what they look like. The French Resistance were just small, independent, ragtag guerrilla groups located all across France, and their job was to harass the Germans. They would disrupt communications, sabotage railway lines, attack convoys, assassinate German officers, and they got their instructions from the British through coded messages over the BBC. And my dad said the instructions they gave them were unbelievably accurate. If they said a German convoy was coming down this road on this day at this time, sure enough, they'd be there. And that was a result of the British having cracked the German Enigma code and knowing everything that they're up to, they were also supplied by the British through airdrops. Here you see the farmhouse that the group stayed in. On one occasion, my dad was staying in the he stayed in this tower. You can see the steeple up here, and one morning, a German convoy came up the road and started heading toward the the farm.

Steve Snyder 26:28
And so my dad had to jump out these crane windows in the back and hightail it into the woods to avoid being captured. And there's several encounters described in the book that his group had with the Germans that are that are pretty exciting. Who took this picture and how ever got to my dad, I'll never know. But that's my dad fighting with the French Resistance in 1944. Finally, seven months after Badenow, word came that there are U.S. troops in a nearby village of Trello, France. So he walked into town, went up to an army major. Actually, it was an element of Patton's Third Army, which would come up through France after D-Day, and identified himself. And then, after being interrogated, he hopped on a convoy taking German prisoners to Paris, and then got a transport to get back to his base in England, where he sent a telegram to my mother, saying he was back at base, fit as a fiddle. Will write. Belgium is a wonderful little country. A lot of people don't realize it's divided into two. The northern half of Belgium is called Flanders, where they speak a dialect of Dutch, and it's rather industrial and more heavily populated in the lower half of France is called Belgium is called Wallonia, where they speak French, and it's it's all rural farmland. And my my dad and the crew that were able to bail out in the plane came down right here on the French border. Actually, my dad and the plane came down in Belgium, and the other guys that were able to bail out came down in France, and he was either brought over and back into Belgium by Germans who captured them, or by the French resistance. And to this day, the Belgian people are so thankful and so grateful for the Americans coming to their rescue and liberating them from four years of Nazi occupation and Nazi oppression. Dr. Delahaye, who I mentioned, formed the Belgium American Foundation in 1984, and they started building all these memorials to remember events that took place during the war. And one of those are memorial to my dad and his crew, which was erected in 1989. And my dad, along with three other members of his crew, went over for the dedication, along with their wives. And before this, my dad didn't talk too much about the war, but there he was reunited with all these Belgian people that hit him, revisited all these places where he was sitting, and that brought it all back. And he started talking up a lot about it after that. Here you see my dad at the dedication ceremonies. It's Dr. Delahay here, my dad with the tie reading a speech. This is Jeanette Gadin. She stayed. He stayed with her for lengthy periods of time. Her husband was a captain in the French Army, which was captured in 1940 when the Germans first invaded the lowlands, spent the rest of the war with the POW. This is Nellie Kilten, the wife of that Belgian customs officer who came to take my dad to a safer location. A couple months after Paul helped him, he was arrested by the Gestapo, sent to prison, tortured, and narrowly escaped being executed. But because of the beatings he took, he developed a brain tumor and died just a few years after the war. And this is Ramon. Gervain, the man in the trench coat, was the other man that held my dad down from the trees. I've been to Belgium eight times. My first trip was in 1994 with my parents. Here you see this is me, my dad with his bomber jacket on. This is my mother. This is my other sister, Nancy, who was born while my dad was missing in action. So that was really tough on my mom to have one-year-old Susan and infant dancing, never knowing if she'd see her her husband again. These plaques in the front of the monument, or the names of the crew members, their their ages had been when they were shot down, and also their crew positions. On two of the occasions where I went to Belgium, I continued on to Germany to visit at Luftwaffe pilot Hans Berger that shot down my dad's plane. And like I said, we became friends. We're at his apartment here in in Munich.

Steve Snyder 30:51
He's wearing his fighter jacket and has his iron cross. We can't see it too well. Most all his friends were killed during the war. He was shot down three times himself. He shot down 7b 17 and one Spitfire. He said it was unfortunate they had to be shooting at each other, but that was war. He was pretty much like a U.S. airman, young 1920, year old guy fighting for this country, you know, trying to do his duty and trying to stay alive. He would always say we weren't all evil Nazis. Here you see my dad and myself in 2004 at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. I accompanied my dad to a reunion of the Air Force Escape and Evasion Society, he wanted to go see it before he died, and that was the last trip he ever took. He died three years later in 2007, at the age of 91. He wasn't the last crew member to die, but he's the oldest at 91. And today, all the surviving World War II veterans, the few that are left, are all in their hundreds. At the end of their, at the one time, there were 16 million World War II men who served, and as you can tell from this chart, that number has been dwindling very rapidly. And now there's less than one half a percent of these men. There is no other event in history that affected more people than World War II. 60 million people died, millions more were wounded, millions more were left homeless and displaced. It changed the course of the U.S. and the world for forever. And to me, the brave young men who fought and died to preserve freedom, are the generation, and their sacrifice must never be forgotten. It's our duty to remember. Thank you. Now, if they have any questions, I'll try to take those. Let me help

Speaker 1 33:06
you with the questions.

Steve Snyder 33:09
Need. Let me try to. How do I undo? Now I can't unshare my screen.

Speaker 2 33:15
Steve, I can unshare it for you.

Steve Snyder 33:17
There we go. There you go.

Speaker 1 33:20
We do have a question, Steve. For Jeremiah, do Jeremiah, if you want to go off mute and ask Steve your question.

Speaker 3 33:29
Yeah, just trying to compose myself real quick here. Steve, do you remember me?

Steve Snyder 33:39
Yes. Oh my goodness, Jeremy Liddyoff! You played kids baseball with my son.

Speaker 3 33:46
I coached Clayton at Los Alamitos.

Steve Snyder 33:50
Yes, great to see you.

Speaker 3 33:53
Oh my God, I'm listening to this story and I'm like, I oh my god, like I I know this story, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm so emotional right now. I just I can't believe that you're actually presenting in my skill bridge right now. Like I'm blown away. Please, please give Clayton my best. We're still in touch. You know I'm super proud of him for creating that water polo league out there. I actually helped him get his bartender for the championship matches. I don't know if you heard about that.

Steve Snyder 34:22
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't know. Anyway,

Speaker 3 34:25
yeah, yeah. I still have so many connections back in California. Anyway, so much love for you, and yeah, gosh, I I can't appreciate the presentation enough. This is really uh, it's it's blowing my mind right now. It's great to see you.

Steve Snyder 34:41
For the people in the audience, when when Jeremiah was young, he had this long, long, full yellow hair. I see he doesn't have that anymore. I had a

Speaker 3 34:52
mullet. I had a full grown mullet. You know, my mom wanted me to be a rock star back in elementary school. So, only problem was once. My hair, my shoulders-it just flipped up, you know. So I, yeah, wow. We, Steve and I have known each other for so long. Like I can't even tell you the atrium. This guy has a giant parrot. Use atrium that's just. We still have

Steve Snyder 35:15
our. I know you

Speaker 4 35:17
do. Yeah,

Steve Snyder 35:17
we've had it for 33 years now, our big bar, our macaw peso.

Speaker 3 35:24
That's so amazing. I grew up around the corner from from Steve, literally two blocks away. He's right across the street from the elementary school that I went to. Yeah, my mom's still in town. She's over there on the water. I I got to come visit her at some point, and I will definitely stop by. You can be sure of that, Steve.

Steve Snyder 35:43
Well, wonderful. It'd be great to see you.

Speaker 3 35:46
It's great to see you. I'm I'm going to stop taking up the time, but uh, yeah. God bless.

Steve Snyder 35:51
God bless you.

Speaker 1 35:55
Wow. I'm not sure if anyone can follow that up. We do have some other questions. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 36:03
I just I had to reach out.

Speaker 1 36:05
No, I definitely understand. I don't know who was first. Cody, you're on my screen first. Do you want to ask your question?

Speaker 4 36:14
It's not really a question for an actual answer, but I love hearing your stories. Thank you for coming on. Where can I go listen to you talk all day?

Steve Snyder 36:27
Well, if you go to my website, which is stevesniderauthor.com, I have my speaking schedule on there because I go around the country. They're also my website's just not about the book. There's all sorts of research information about World War II and videos, archival footage, and so it's a very in-depth insight. Just not about the book. So if anyone's interested in that,

Speaker 4 37:04
thank you. It like I said, it was amazing to listen to you, and it was so much fun to listen to this history. Thank you.

Steve Snyder 37:11
My pleasure. Like I said, it's my honor to be on today. One thing I'll mention after my dad got back to his base in England, the Air Force had a rule at that time that if you were shot down and aided by the underground, that you couldn't go back in the combat because they were worried if you were shot down a second time and captured by the Germans and tortured, that you'd give up the identity of the people that helped you the first time. The only exception to that was Chuck Yeager, P 51 pilot, who personally met with General Eisenhower and talked him into going back into combat. So my dad was sent back to the states, and he became a flight a B 17 flight instructor for the remainder of the war, first down in Florida and then in Ohio.

Speaker 4 38:05
Wow, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 38:08
We have Michael or or Moose.

Speaker 5 38:14
Thank you very much, Steve. First and foremost, thank you very much for coming and talking to us. I served six six and a half years in England, and had the opportunity to live at RAF Feltwell, where the Wellington bombers that joined those groups actually were birthed, came back, were repaired, and things of that nature. I served there as a security forces member, so I got to go inside all of the structures, see the history. Other people didn't get to see things that were left behind, and I worked in anti-terrorism, so I actually had the opportunity to go to Ely, go to the cathedral, and go up all the way into the top into the spire where the World War II pilots, bomber pilots, and things like that signed the back of the Angel doors all the way around because the spire was tall enough, like you were talking, they would come back and the cloud cover and the fog and things in England could be terrible. That chapel spire in Ely was actually one of the points that both the Americans and the English and the German pilots knew because there are German names in there. So having the opportunity to, I believe, see you for a second time. I think I actually bought your book when you were at RAF Lake and Heath at the BX at one point, but I believe I have a copy of your book that was purchased in England. So having the opportunity to see you like this is truly remarkable, sir.

Steve Snyder 39:39
Wonderful. Yeah, like like all all over Europe, you know, every little village in Hamlet has its own church, and so all those of those 40 bomber bases, there was always a church nearby, and a lot of those pilots, you know, would hit see the steeple of that church and to direct them toward the airfield. Thank you. I'm going back over the 306 Bomb Group. We're going to have kind of reunion back in in England in next July, where a bunch of members are going to go back. It'll be the 25th anniversary of the the 306 Palm Route Museum there, so we're going to go back for the celebrations. That'll be a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 40:29
Do you guys ever meet up at Duxford for the Battle of Britain museum situation there?

Steve Snyder 40:34
I've never been to the Battle of of Britain. Yeah, I've been to Duxford a few times, and that'll be one of the places that we visit when we go back the next year. One of the things that's fun about it that there's a a pub that the the Falcon that's right near Thurlay, and the the night before my dad's last mission, he and his other other officer, the crew tied one on there, and so it's fun to go back there and have a couple pints. My dad said they were all hungover the next morning, but once they got above 10,000 feet and went on pure oxygen, that sobered them right up.

Speaker 5 41:16
Well, if you get the opportunity, the Wellington bar is still standing and felt well, and they still have everything from all the bomber groups on the wall. The young man that owns it is a is an American, but he's the son of a son of a a pairing because his father's father didn't leave England. He married a British girl when they stayed there, and then started that pub. So absolutely everything of the history from there. The bombers that came that went out, that came back, their groups and things of that nature are all there on the walls. So it would be a wonderful stop for y'all.

Steve Snyder 41:47
Oh, fabulous! Thank you, thank you. Appreciate that.

Speaker 1 41:54
We have a couple more questions, and I don't know whose hand was up first, but I'm going to go off the screen. We have Lorenzo.

Speaker 6 42:03
Hey Steve, not really a question. I just wanted to comment something. I was lucky enough. My great grandpa was a paratrooper in World War II, also, so I was lucky enough to hear a few of his stories. So this was very nostalgic. So I appreciate you taking your time and coming out here and telling your dad's story.

Steve Snyder 42:19
Thank you very much. Yeah, if any of you have the, you know, in the future have the opportunity to go to Normandy and visit all the D-Day sites in Bastogne and all that, that's a bucket list thing to do. I highly recommend that if you're able to in the future.

Speaker 1 42:44
We have Julia. Hi,

Speaker 7 42:48
Steve. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. So you said that your dad was missing for seven months. How did you guys find out that he was okay? Did he just surprise you guys and show up at the front door, or did you know he was coming? You guys prepared for it. How was that reunion after he was gone for all that time?

Steve Snyder 43:07
Well, I was born born two years after the war, so I weren't wasn't there for that. But my dad's plane was shot down on february 8. My mother got a telegram. Well, the the mothers or wives of the crew all got a telegram on august 23 saying that you know your loved one's missing in action, and then she got another letter saying you know he's still missing in action, but you know maybe he's become a prisoner of war. But my mother knew nothing that that whole time until my dad got back to England and sent her that Western Union telegram, and that had to be the happiest day in my mother's life and my dad's parents' life. After my dad bailed out, he was totally separated from the other members of the crew, so he didn't know what happened to any of them until he got back to his base when he found out that you know some were killed in the plane, some were POWs, and some were still missing in action. So a poignant thing in the book is there's a lot of excerpts from letters written by members of the crew and family members, especially after they were shot down, which are really moving about you know, the worry and the prayers that their mothers and wives send each other, not knowing if they'd ever see their loved one again. That that that was tough.

Speaker 7 44:34
Thank you.

Speaker 1 44:37
We have yeah.

Steve Snyder 44:39
I mentioned my you know my other sister was born woman. Dad was missing in action, so he didn't know if he had a boy or a girl until he got back to England. It's funny in all his letters that he wrote to my mother. He always referred to the baby as Steve or Stevie, but it turned out to be Nancy.

Speaker 1 45:00
We have Alex.

Speaker 8 45:05
Steve, thanks for the story. It was that's phenomenal. Reminds me of my grandfather speaking about World War II and Panama Canal. But I had a question. You've clearly balanced your passion with the story with your career selling. What was it insurance for optical or around the country on the eastern border? How did you balance you know this kind of career with your passion and what was that like over the years?

Steve Snyder 45:38
Well, it's interesting that basically what I'm doing now is very similar to what I did in my career job. In my career job, I was you know promoting a vision care plan, going traveling around the United States, doing a lot of cold calling, approaching people, trying to inform people about it, see if they were interested in the program, and it's pretty much what I do now with my my book. That's been very advantageous for me having that background because most, you know, I had no writing background at all. I didn't study. I I wasn't author, but I knew how to market things because most people who write a book they have no idea what they do, what to do once they their book's published. But once the book was published, I just started doing you know contacting anybody and everybody who might be interested in reading the book or promoting the book and trying to review the book, so it just came natural for me, and it really it changed my life because I was retired for a few years, and then all of a sudden I have this new career, which is more like a hobby, which I love doing, and I I love meeting people because like going around at these air shows or presentations, I meet all sorts of people. Unfortunately, most people know very little about their World War II veteran because their dads or uncles didn't talk about it. So I try to keep the memory alive of not only my dad and his crew, but men in the Eighth Air Force in the World War II to keep the memory alive, you know, it's 80 years ago, and it's fading in people's memory. And I'm doing my best not to let that happen. But it's been such a blessing for me to between my travels and my promotion and being on the board of the 306 and 8th Air Force. I keep plenty brithing, so you know. I guess in a way that's keeping me young in certain ways, but it definitely had a tie-in. But my career job and and you know my my post career endeavor.

Speaker 8 48:02
Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1 48:05
I think I saw one more hand potentially. Michelle, did you have a question? It was.

Speaker 9 48:11
Can can you hear me? I had to change my audio. First, Steve, thank you so much for sharing your story. My father was actually in World War Two. I was a late child, but it was exactly what you said. He didn't say a whole lot about his stories, and we tried, but I didn't want to push. He was in the Navy, so it was a little different. He told me he never wanted to be a Marine. He never wanted to be in the Army. He knew that the navy was the safest place. I guess is basically what he said. So he actually went in and volunteered. He wasn't part of getting told he was going to do what he was going to do, and that's kind of how he was the entire life. He was he he did what he wanted to do, but I do. I I really love that you're sharing that love of World War Two because it is being lost. The actual true stories that happened. But one thing he did show tell me was he was off the the the where the bomb of Hiroshima went off in in a sub, and or he they didn't know anything about it. They thought they were actually getting attacked at the time, and that's how quiet it was during that time. So,

Steve Snyder 49:31
thank you. Yes, you know that that the guys had a lot of reasons not to talk about us. Some, you know, of course, saw horrible things. You know, they they felt you know because those guys didn't look at themselves as being anything special. They just looked like it was a job. They went over there, they did their job, and they came back home and got on with their lives. And a lot of them thought, well, you know, no one's really going to be interested in it. Or you know, many many had bad memories. You know, back then they called it shell shock. Or whatever, and you know they didn't know anything about PTSD, and they really got no help. So, you know, I talked to a lot of people that you know their dad started drinking a lot, and that was a problem. And so, yeah, there's lots of reasons why they they they didn't talk about it, or people wouldn't understand it, like anyone who's been in combat, I'm sure, feel that way. That unless you were there, you'll just never know what and appreciate what it was like.

Speaker 1 50:30
Well, thank you so much, Steve. I think we're right at our at our time mark, and so that is wonderful. So thank you for being here. I believe his LinkedIn is somewhere in the chat. If you want to connect with him in LinkedIn as well as his website, we put that there in the chat for you as well. I'm going to hand it back over to Sarah. But again, thank you much. Thank you so much, Steve, for being here.

Steve Snyder 50:57
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker 2 51:03
All right. Take care,

Speaker 3 51:04
Steve. I'll see you next time I'm in town.

Steve Snyder 51:06
Okay, it's a deal.

Speaker 3 51:10
Great to see you.

Steve Snyder 51:11
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 51:14
All right. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you, Tori, for you know asking the questions, and Steve, thank you for the story. I'm so glad you were able to reconnect with one of our candidates here at Seven Eagle. I know we all really, really enjoyed the story, and we hope you can come back to Seven Eagle. You know, maybe in a few months or so when we have a new group of candidates here, so we can keep this story alive.

Steve Snyder 51:39
Wonderful, definitely.

Speaker 2 51:41
All right. Well, have a wonderful day, Steve. Thank you.